We start off by doing a small calculation from a reputed text book. The text book is Shreve’s Chemical Process Industries, which is a textbook adopted in the chemical engineering curriculum of many reputed colleges.

An A4 size office paper of normal quality weighs 5 grams. It is easy for one to pro-rate the above table and estimate what it takes to make 5 grams of paper.

Based on 1982 data, to make an A4 paper you would need:

22.5 g Chemicals

665 ml Water

3.5 ml Oil or 5 grams of coal

20 cc Wood

23.76 kJ Power

Well, the story does not stop here. I know that the paper industry has adopted better manufacturing methods and today the specific consumption for making paper could be a little different. Today’s processes use significant amounts of recycle paper, use lesser water. Again, the amount of paper recycled and water conserved in different plants /countries is different, so it becomes difficult to establish an exact global average in a brief article.

Nevertheless, a few parallels can be drawn.

Every time you waste an A4 paper at office, conservatively, I can assume that, you also waste a large cup of water, a spoon full of coal (or oil), another spoonful of various chemicals, energy sufficient to keep a 40 W bulb glowing for 10 minutes and wood whose weight could be 2-4 times the weight of the paper, depending on the amount of recycle paper used.

Every time you throw a piece of paper into a dust bin, imagine yourself wasting all the other resources as well. I’m sure you’ll find it a lot easier to save paper.

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we, are the cure.”

He points to an interesting comment on BBC – “…it’s not the planet we should be worrying about, it’s us.” In principle, I agree with the point of view that whatever damage human activity has caused to the planet till date is not major. With the race being supposedly being well past the peak oil, perhaps our ability to inflict further damage to the planet is limited. When the oil prices go up in the next few years, I would expect the food production to drop and people will dying of malnourishment. The population would drop and people would be forced again go back to living in fertile lands near water sources.

But for the human race, it has never been about the planet. It has always been about us. It is the same callous attitude that prevailed for centuries and still continues to do so. For once people should think about living symbiotically with the host planet. I wish there was a global political body that laid down rules for the planet. As a finite planet, the earth can only sustain finite human activity. What is that point? We will really need a careful scientific evaluation to find out. To me, ideally, politics should be simple human welfare. We need to have an association with this planet such that the damage we do is minimal and every person on this planet has a joyous experience of life on this planet. If it means limiting the population of the planet to a billion, then we should get there in the next 50 years with a clear plan.

Global politics, beyond regional interests, is the need of the day. Like in Starwars, we sure need a galactic republic and a Padme to decide for each planet.

In April, KLM had an interesting exclusive in-flight documentary on global warming which I happened to watch.

The documentary goes on to present that man-made CO2 emissions do not cause global warming. It states that earth’s present temperature increase is driven by the sun and not by human activity. A few points presented in the documentary are:

1. CO2 is not the major green house gas. Its concentration change has been too small to explain such major temperature differences. Oceans can emit 180 billion tons of CO2 tonnes of CO2 where as human activity emits only about 7 billion tons. It is argued that water vapour and methane are bigger influences than CO2.

2. Earth has seen decades of temperatures which were significantly higher and and also significantly lower. But the ice did not ever vanish completely.

3. Changing of the size of the polar ice caps is explained to be a normal thing which happens routinely with temperature even between summer and winter.

4. Earth’s temperature is more closely related to solar activity and is known to have had a very good co-relation with it for centuries.

5. Change in CO2 concentration in the polar ice caps is an effect of change of earth’s temperature and it has a 800 year lag. This 800 year year lag is the time required for the temperature of the oceans to change to release or absorb CO2.

6. Earth’s temperature continued to drop from 1940 to 1970 when the economic activity boomed. The present upward trend lasts from only 1970.

7. Yet another observation was that the change in temperature profiles of the earth’s atmospheric layers did not seem to support increased green-house activity.

8. The model used to predict the global climate has several hundreds of assumptions on which not all experts seem to be in agreement. Clearly, a model can only be as good as the assumptions that go up to make it.

The documentary goes on to state that the IPCC report is driven by considerations that are non-scientific and serves to retain several jobs which were created by the billions of dollars funded to study this.

Those who are closely following the global warming issue must be already aware that there is a clear second opinion on the need to limit the emissions from developing countries in order to reduce global warming.

One can’t help but wonder if the entire global warming tale is fabricated by an energy thirsty group of nations who are using misleading pointers to prevent the developing nations from creating a stronger demand for energy.

When your screen is white, being it an empty word page, or the Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when its black it consumes only 59 watts.

Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts / hour per year would be saved.

In a response to this article Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white version, but with a lower energy consumption check

One man cannot cause global warming. The globe is warmer now because over several decades , its people have continued to do things that have consumed energy. Cutting down unnecessary energy consumption is the first step to slow down the process. Here is a quick check list that applies in the Indian scenario.

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.

Another webpage states that “oil is actually a renewable, primordial syrup continually manufactured by the earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs.”

Except a few chemical engineers around me who atleast seem to understand the enormity of the problem, most people around me seem blissfully ignorant and completely unaware. I even heard about some one saying “Oil can’t ever run out, it gushes out from under the earth.”

History seems all set to reverse itself.

I’m reminded of Gauguin’s words: “In order to do something new we must go back to the source, to humanity in its infancy.”

The human kind surely does not need oil to survive.

Great empires were established without a single drop of oil. Even though Rome was not built in a day, it was built before refineries were built.

In lieu of oil, humans will need to work harder, but that can’t be very bad. For centuries, our forefathers have done that.

But of course, working harder was never an acceptable solution to the human race. What we want is a simple magical energy solution will present itself to the human race so that the laziness can prevail and all can watch TV sitting on fat couches eating chips and drinking cola. It could be a simple wave of Harry Potter’s wand or a wierd gravity defying perpetual motion machine installed and maintained by Mickey Mouse. The solution has to come from somewhere.

People, atleast some of them, need to take up the role of artists to create the ultimate energy solution…and the painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.

Gauguin said : I shut my eyes in order to see

This means that if a painter limits himself to the mundane sight of the world, his ability to create things beyond the mundane sight is lost.

What I learn from this is that for one to arrive at a truly creative solution, one has to stop worrying about the norm. Creative solutions are obtained more easily if the norm is discarded and the mind is free to seek and try means that are new, different or innovated.

I’m going to close my eyes now, so that I can find a solution to the energy crisis. Check this space tomorrow 🙂